Offshore 50

14th August 2017

During the summer of 2016 The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame began receiving emails from former offshore DJs, asking if anything was being organised to mark the fiftieth anniversary
of the Marine Offences Act which was coming up the following year. The MOA was the law which forced the closure of most of the pirate stations and which Radio Caroline bravely defied. It was going to be the last major anniversary of
the sixties era of offshore radio and, from the correspondence we received, it seemed that there was considerable interest in marking it.

We began asking around and, at that time, it appeared that nothing was being planned, so we joined forces with Chris and Mary Payne of Radio London, and our mutual friend
Alan Hardy, to organise Offshore 50 - a grand reunion for the pirates of the sixties.

Logo designed by Mary Payne.

We were fortunate to be able to secure The Stateroom, a function room on board the Tattershall Castle. This former Humber ferry is moored
on the Thames, opposite the London Eye, and now serves as a floating pub and restaurant. We booked it for 14th August 2017 - exactly fifty years after the closedown of Radios London, Scotland and 270. Invitations were sent to every
surviving former pirate of the sixties that we could trace. The response was immediate and very positive. Around a hundred former offshore DJs, engineers and on-shore personnel wanted to attend - with a number flying in from far-flung
corners of the globe.

Photos taken by the official photographer Sylvan Mason will be appearing on the Offshore 50 website. There are more to be seen on the
Radio London site, the Offshore Radio Guide's Flickr
page and Ben Meijering's website but here are a few that we took on that memorable Monday afternoon, augmented by some kindly supplied by contributors and others
we found on social media:

A group of Radio Essex colleagues. Photo shared on Facebook by Noel Miller. Left to right: Dick Dixon, engineer Mike Brereton,
Roger Scott, Chris Stewart (as he was then known), Guy Hamilton, Mark West and Michael Cane (as he was called on Radio Essex).